


The night he left

by demiurgent_g



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 21:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21125186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demiurgent_g/pseuds/demiurgent_g





	The night he left

You hadn’t realised how important he’d become until he disappeared.

You’ve no memory of when you first saw him, or became aware of his existence; no idea when the smelly heap behind the park bench became a living, breathing person. Once you’d noticed him, you smiled hello. He remembered you the next day, and a social contract was formed.

Every day you smiled hello. He would wave and you would head into your day, uninterested in his.

One day it rained heavily and through the pelting water you hurried. You rushed past the bench in the park without a thought, but something nagged at you and you glanced back.

He was there. Still, silent and slowly soaking up the rain where he sat, surrounded by muddy puddles.

You turned back to go home. Why shouldn’t he sit there? He could move if he was uncomfortable.

You were nearly at the tube station before shame overcame selfishness.

Pretending to yourself that you’d only come this far to buy him something warm, you went into the bakery, bought two hot sausage rolls and two cups of tea then headed back to the park.

He was sat there still. At first he was so unresponsive you thought he must be asleep, but as you reached out to touch his shoulder and offer him the tea, you saw he was completely non-responsive. Scenes of TV dramas seared through your mind, carrying a multitude of implausible scenarios that required you to have an improbable skillset. Your increasing panic must have awoken something in him, because he blinked and focused his eyes on you.

He might have been drunk, high or senile. He wasn’t fully there.

You coaxed him to drink his tea, and eat a sausage roll. You tried to move him, but he resisted ferociously until you were able to convince him you just wanted him on the bench, out of the puddle, so he didn’t get sick. He accepted your assurances, with a strong tenor of suspicion, and in an attempt to placate him you offered him the other sausage roll and tea.

He devoured them both and you shivered. The panic had subsided and the cold rain was making its presence felt. You weren’t homeless and starving, but the three pounds you’d spent on his dinner meant that you’d be eating more cheaply than him tonight.

“You’re cold?” The question was barked at you.

“What? No! Not at all. I’m fine.” The lie slid out of you automatically and you pushed to distract him, worried that if he remained as he was you’d walk past a corpse the next day. “I’m glad you’re feeling better though. You looked quite ill when I saw you.”

He reached out and seized your hand, where it rested on your thigh. Whatever he said was lost in horror, as you became aware of the filth of him. His hands were coated with grime, scabs and suspicious marks. His stench reached out to embrace you and the frail fingers were the talons of a demon, clawing and grasping at you.

You flung him off and rushed away. All the way home you shuddered and this time the guilt remained at bay until you were curled up safe, clean and warm in bed.

The next morning you took a new route to work.

It lasted only a few days. Over the weekend you were in a charity shop and saw a warm, semi-waterproof, woollen hat.

The next time you walked home through the park, you clutched the hat like a talisman. You made your peace offering with an apology for running off. He accepted it, but did not smile. The shame lurked and you sat on the bench to chat with him.

You didn’t stay long – maybe five minutes – but you were glad you’d done it. The next day you refilled your thermos with tea before going home. You stopped in the park and shared it between you. Winter was coming, and you believed the tea was a pleasant barrier to the chill air. While you drank, he repaid you with a tall tale. You laughed over the punchline, shook out the empty cups and bid him goodnight.

You repeated the exercise each worknight, and with each flask he had a new tale. When it rained again, you brought an umbrella. Over time you noticed little things. His patch by the bin was sheltered from the wind, but not the rain, so he often became water-logged. You asked around at work if anyone had large boxes. They thought you were moving house, and you were too embarrassed to tell the truth.

When you saw how three layers of thick corrugated cardboard could raise him out of the boggy puddles while he told you stories, you were again glad you’d done it.

You began to feel a peculiar kind of responsibility for the old man and dropped by with a small aid whenever you could scrounge him something. Your biggest expenditure on him was a tube of antiseptic cream for those scabs on his hands and a pack of wipes. You made him promise he’d clean his hands three times daily and put on the cream once a day when they were freshly cleaned. He smiled at you, with a shadow of confusion in his eyes. Panicked it might be indicating senility, you repeated your instructions and urged him to agree. He did, but quietly, and your worries weren’t alleviated. When taxes went up you cancelled your streaming services to guarantee you had that ten pounds a month to help him out.

For your first Christmas, you gave him a chunky scarf you’d knitted from a bag of odds and ends you’d picked up at a charity jumble sale. You laughed together over your shoddy workmanship, and he told you of his sister’s failed efforts to crochet.

Of all his stories, it was the most banal. Ordinarily, his histories recounted tales of exploration, of fantastic jewels, maharajahs and pirates. This one he told with a shadow of pain in his eyes and you reached out to gently clasp his hands where they rested in his lap.

It was the first time you’d touched since you ran away.

He fell silent and you didn’t know what to do, so you continued to hold his hands.

“She sounds lovely.” The words you spoke seemed to fall like lead weights into the abyss between your clasped hands. “You must miss her.”

“Aye.” He whispered and you squeezed his hands gently.

He became your confidant when you tried dating again. You always warned him when you wouldn’t be around to see him the next evening. He always asked after the date. He sighed over the bad ones, mourning the lack of good men in the modern world. The good ones made him smile indulgently, but none of them were ever good enough in his mind.

None of them ever made it past the third date, so he may have been right. Weirdly, none of them ever ghosted her. Her friends all had men who disappeared off the face of the earth. Hers always at least messaged to say they weren’t looking for commitment just now, or – as on one memorable occasion where he turned out to be married already – met with her face to face to give their reason for not continuing.

When you decided to try for a new job he encouraged you, convinced you were capable of anything. He scoured papers for job ads and when you showed him the websites of various places you were thinking of, he was impressed. One logo rubbed him up the wrong way, although he wouldn’t tell you why. As you were walking to your interview you saw a few people walking from the building still wearing their passes. One snarled at a homeless man on the corner and in that instant you knew that someone working here had treated your friend badly. You signed in at reception, but before they could notify HR of your arrival you knew you couldn’t do it and asked the receptionist to convey your apologies.

When he asked after the interview you brushed it off. “They didn’t look like the kind of place I wanted to be.”

Sometimes you wondered how much he knew, but he kept his feelings close.

You got a new job soon enough, and the pay rise made life a lot more comfortable. Within a year of your arrival you were promoted and the park became a pace of celebration. You wanted to take him for dinner, but even for this event he refused to leave his spot, so you brought a celebratory picnic to him, careful to ensure you could leave the leftovers with him – nothing that required refrigeration.

He’d been skin and bone when you met him, but over the course of a few years you’d fattened him up. He never drank, smoked or touched anything illegal. He was articulate and sociable. He was old – old enough to draw a pension, at least, so even if he’d been unemployed all his life he should be able to find some form of housing but he refused to leave his spot. There never seemed to be any other homeless people in the park, and any park officials you saw accepted his presence as a given. Your presence confused them, but him they ignored. At times you worried he might be a figment of your imagination.

One time you told him that and he laughed aloud. “I’ve been called many things in my time,” he declared, “but that’s new!”

With your new wealth you could afford a holiday and before you left you gave him a small pay as you go mobile with your number programmed in.

“You can call anyone you want,” you assured him. “I’ll keep it topped up. But I want to be sure if there’s an emergency you call me.”

He fell silent and got that look again, the one that made you think he might not have understood. You repeated your instructions until you were sure he had, and then you went on your holiday.

When you returned to work you popped by the park to see him and updated him on your week. He was happy to see you and laughed with childlike joy to hear you recount the plots of the terrible books you’d read as you sunbathed.

You fell back into your routine and life was good. And then he was gone.

You tried calling the phone you’d given him, but there was no answer.

There was no-one to ask after him. Fred – the only name you had for him – had just disappeared. The hospitals hadn’t taken in a homeless man from the park, no hostels or hospices acknowledged his existence, and the newspapers had no records of him.

You quietly mourned, and left small tokens behind the bench, hoping that one day he’d return and find them.

Signs appeared at the entrances to the park, formally labelling it the Wilfred Amberly memorial park. You saw one of the park officials putting it up and stopped to chat with him, hoping to hear news of Fred.

“Sorry, love,” He looked down at you. “Old guy jest buggered off one day. Picked up ‘is blankit and git off. Dint say anything, jest went. Funny, ‘e was. ‘e wouldn’t have liked these signs at all.”

“Really?”

“Oh, aye. Very particular, ‘e was. Wanted everything tidy and nothing changed, you know? ‘e’d a right set to with old Frankie when ‘e planted the pansies in the wrong bed one year. Heh. These signs ‘ere, they’ve been in the shed best part of five years. Top brass always said no money to put them up. It’s like they was jest waiting for ‘im to go before they let us do the job.”

You smiled sadly and made your way home.

Without Fred to chat with, life seemed emptier somehow and you were shocked to find what a hole his absence had left in your life.

And now here you are. Home alone on a Friday night, waiting for a pizza big enough for two, hoping the delivery driver is fooled into thinking you’re not as much of a loser as you feel. The doorbell rings and you shuffle over, to find on your doorstep a uniformed police officer and a smartly dressed man.

“Miss Helen O’Reilly?”

“I’m guessing you’re not my pizza?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss O’Reilly. We-“

“That’s Fred’s scarf!” It’s on the top of a box held by the officer, the shambolic mess you knitted back when you had no money for gifts. “Is he OK? Where is he?”

“Miss O’Reilly, I’m-“

It’s not the dapper man’s night as the pizza boy appears behind him before he can finish his second attempt at a sentence.

You receive the pizza and in an effort to reduce your confusion invite the policeman in to deposit his box. The dapper man follows.

You’ve stayed in the same tiny flat you rented when you were dirt poor. You could have afforded to move but it never seemed to be all that important, until now. Now you’re acutely aware you only have two chairs to allocate to three bottoms, and no dinner table to put the pizza on.

“I’m comfortable standing.” The uniformed man smiles as he speaks. His pleasant tones are as soothing as hot chocolate and you are instantly at ease. You wave the dapper man to one chair and take the other with the pizza perched on your knees.

“Please, is Fred alright? I’ve been terribly worried, and he’s not answering his phone.”

“I’m sorry, Miss O’Reilly.” The dapper man shakes his head gravely. You expected this, but somehow it’s still a blow. “Mr Amberly passed away three weeks ago at his house, but he left specific instructions regarding you…”

“No, no. No, I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. Fred – my Fred – he’s homeless. He lives in the park by the Greenway station.”

“Mr Amberly did live in the park for a decade before his death and considered that place his home, but he also owned another property which he returned to before he died.”

“Another? I’m sorry, this doesn’t make any sense.”

“Perhaps it would help if I told you the whole story?”

You nod, feeling helplessly adrift.

“Mr Wilfred Amberly was the second son of a successful prospector. He was raised on the prospecting site, and grew to be an adventurer and explorer. He charted out a small part of the Amazon, and spent some time exploring on each continent. His family wealth enabled him to indulge in most adventures but as his health failed in his early fifties he returned home. He found life in a brick building to be a form of imprisonment, and a nine to five job was, frankly, a terrible experience although he was a sharp businessman.” The dapper man smiles gently. “This was about the time I met him, and was fortunate enough to take on a small share of his investments. We worked together for a decade before he couldn’t bear it any more and declared his intention of living out his life under an open sky.”

“So, he moved to the park?”

“He owned a number of properties. The park was one. He bequeathed it to the city upon his death – alongside a number of other properties during his lifetime – with the proviso that they were maintained as public spaces. As he owned the land, he was permitted to stay in residence unchallenged.”

“And he never wanted to leave. But he did, in the end.”

“That’s not entirely true, Miss O’Reilly.” The dapper man seems uncomfortable. “I don’t have explicit instructions to tell you this much, but I think you deserve to know.”

You wait in silence for him to find the words.

“Mr Amberly was not always happy in the park. For the first few months I believe he was happy enough, but then he had a few bad experiences that stuck with him. I went to visit him twice a week myself and he was very unhappy for quite some time. I believe his mental health was suffering badly from the experience of being so isolated while surrounded by people. I tried to convince him to return to the house, but he refused. He said it was a different kind of unhappiness, and he’d already stuck that one out for years. I reminded him that the park was still legally private property and he was always safe there. I think that registered with him rather differently to the way I’d intended it.”

He sighs. “At the time I was happy enough that he knew he had options that I didn’t explore it deeply enough. Over time, as his mental health decreased, he seemed to fear leaving the park. I became very worried for him in the month before you became acquainted with him, Miss O’Reilly. He had begun to disassociate entirely. I called a few doctors out to look at him, and they were generally of the opinion that he only had a few months left.”

There is silence. After a short while he breaks it: “I don’t know much of the early stages of your friendship, but I can tell you that within a month of socialising with you, the man I had known returned. He found something in you that made his life worth living again.”

You feel your eyes sting.

“What he asked me to tell you now is this: He is sorry he never told you the truth. You were so important to him, and the massive generosity of your actions was humbling. He didn’t dare confess that he chose that life, particularly when he knew how hard you struggled to survive and yet tried to alleviate his suffering.”

“He felt guilty?” You recall that peculiar expression that overtook him when you went out of your way to ensure you could help him. Guilt. That was the look.

“He felt guilty.”

“I wish he hadn’t. Everything I did, I chose to do. He never tricked me into it.”

“Nevertheless, he felt you deserved better. He kept an eye out for you – he was fairly certain you wouldn’t forgive him when you discovered he’d had the men you dated investigated to ensure they weren’t cheats, thieves or liars.”

You never had a father growing up. Discovering Fred had been acting in loco over-protective parentis behind your back triggers a raft of complicated emotions. The two men wait in respectful silence while you struggle to pull yourself back together.

“Did I miss the funeral?”

“I’m afraid so, Miss O’Reilly.”

“Was he buried or cremated?”

“He was buried in a simple ceremony as per his request.”

“Can you tell me where? I’d like to visit him.”

The two men exchange looks.

“Of course, Miss O’Reilly, but before that we need to discuss the legacy.”

“The legacy?”

“Miss O’Reilly, I’m Mr Amberly’s lawyer. We’re here to carry out the terms of his will.”

“He had a will?”

“Quite a complex one, in fact.”

“Oh.”

“In simple terms, Miss O’Reilly, Mr Amberly changed his will shortly before he died to establish three charitable institutions. He had no children of his own, and his wider family have no need of his money, so the will is uncontested. The charities – each given eighteen million pounds - support three causes that personally affected him: the support of homeless individuals within the county, the maintenance of public spaces provided for rest and recreation, and the care and rescue of animals.”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”

“The charities were formed to equal fifty percent of his estate value. The other fifty percent was bequeathed to you.”

Your world tilts and you grip the chair you’re sat on.

“He left me eighteen million pounds?”

“Err, no.”

You sigh with relief, and a little disappointment. “That would have been weird. Sorry, you said eighteen million and it’s a _lot_ of money, so I got… distracted. I guess I’m more avaricious than I knew.”

“In fact he left you something in the region of fifty four million pounds plus various sundries which formed the balance of his estate.”

This time gripping the chair doesn’t help, and the world tumbles away beneath you.

A month later you’re standing before a headstone.

FRED.

The declaration is stark and lonely, and tells the world nothing of the man she remembers. How many people will walk past this and not understand the world of the person who lies beneath? How many won’t even read that small name? How many will imagine they know something of the man it is dedicated to, when in reality they know nothing?

Over the last few weeks you quit your job and dedicated your working hours to recalling and transcribing as many of his stories as you can remember.

Happily, it’s going to take you years to write his biography, but it will be done. Fred will be remembered.


End file.
